


left me nothing lovely or whole

by smallredboy



Series: protect me from what i want [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Canon, Alternate Season/Series 02, Autistic Will Graham, Creepy Hannibal Lecter, Flashbacks, Gen, Shutdowns, Trans Will Graham, purposefully causing a sensory overload
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22456822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallredboy/pseuds/smallredboy
Summary: Will reminisces on one of Hannibal'sexperimentswhile at the asylum.
Series: protect me from what i want [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1615912
Comments: 6
Kudos: 71
Collections: Prompt Table Challenge: Clouds and Shadows





	left me nothing lovely or whole

**Author's Note:**

> **trans bingo:** neurovariation  
>  **clouds and shadows @ creativechallenges:** nausea
> 
> apparently im writing more of trans!will suffering. now with added autistic!will and hannibal being an ableist weirdo. oops.
> 
> enjoy!

Memories come back to him slowly, trickling like water drops from a faucet that wasn't closed tight enough,

Will has always remembered the first part, but the other one only comes to him while at the asylum, reorganizing his thoughts and coming across memories he couldn't recall beforehand. It makes him sick, to think of how much Hannibal toyed with him, how he  _ erased _ his memory of him doing all those things to him. He had nearly thrown up when he recalled the tube down his throat, the way Hannibal soothed him, a hand on his shoulder, whispering reassurances as he slowly forced its way down his throat. 

And now he recalls another thing. He's not sure if to call it  _ worse _ . There was no damage to his body, nothing physical; he didn't have Abigail's ear forced down his throat, or had light therapy so bad he had a seizure and started to forget things.

No, this was— this was worse, still, somehow.

The first part was normal. As much as he saw it tinted with evil and manipulation, back then it was normal. Just Hannibal doing his psychiatrist thing.

_ "Have you ever been diagnosed with anything, Will?" he asks him, hands on his lap. He's smiling an almost invisible smile, but the corners of his lips are turned up ever so slightly. Hannibal seldom smiles; nowadays he doesn't quite understand why. Does he think they'll see the carnage between his teeth? _

_ "No," he replies. "I never believed I had to be diagnosed. I'm already _ popular  _ in psychiatric circles enough as it is." He fiddles with his hands a little. "Are you thinking of diagnosing me with something, Dr. Lecter?" _

_ "You _ are  _ thought to be in the spectrum, Will," he says. "I think it would save everyone's time if I did some typical diagnostic tests and see if you qualify under the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder." _

_ Will swallows thickly at that. Of course, he went unnoticed when he was a child, as a girl-presenting child growing up in the eighties. An autistic girl? That was impossible back then. But now everyone whispers about his possible diagnoses. Empathy disorder this, autism that, psychopathy, the works. He hopes he can get some clear answers from Hannibal. _

Oh, he's gotten clear answers from Hannibal. Of course, he's not too sure how to judge his diagnosis now that he knows all of his lies, all of his manipulations. But it sounds right… it sounds right for him to be autistic.  _ A small case, _ Hannibal had told him,  _ it's no wonder you wouldn't have been noticed. _ He masked himself too well as a child to be noticed. Now he's learned not to care. He's the weird, kooky FBI academy professor and profiler, with nervous ticks and an aversion for eye contact, and no one really gets on his case about it.

But after the so-called diagnosis, comes the other part. The part he remembers while at the asylum, watching the lights flicker on and off before having a memory intrude right into his brain, like a spark of lightning coursing through his veins and forcing him to remember.

_ "I've brought various things to try out to assess your level on the spectrum," Hannibal says. _

_ "There's not really levels, are there?" he asks. He has done his fair amount of research, as he's always gotten armchair diagnosed with this after all. He knows a thing or two about it. _

_ Hannibal shrugs. "It's a figure of speech. Let's get started, shall we?" _

_ It's various things. The light therapy starts as to see if he's sensitive to light. When he reacts by having a mild seizure, Hannibal pushes for it to become something where he can induce memory loss on him. But there's many more senses to abuse and to take advantage of. _

_ The first one he's really aware of happening, is the headphones. Hannibal hands him them, puts them on his ears, says he can pull them off any time necessary. But his eyes glint in such a way that make him convinced that if he does take them off, he'll be disappointed. Something in his stomach stirs inside him at that. He _ can't  _ (and he won't) disappoint Hannibal. _

_ It's loud. It's hellishly loud. It feels like peeling his skin off with how loud it is, nausea overtaking him as he resists the urge to retch with all the willpower he has left. He can't quite tell anything about the noise, except that it exists and that it roars into his ears. There's… there's screaming, there's a loud, thumping _ noise  _ in the background. It sounds like squelching, but he's not too sure how. That's all he can make out before he's reduced to tears, hugging his knees as he tries to be as small as possible, shutting down completely as the sounds play right into his ears, louder and louder and louder— _

_ The worst part of that memory is being able to look up at Hannibal amongst his tears. _

_ Hannibal seldom smiles; that's a fact about the man. He's reserved, composed, almost always emotionless. But right then and there, he _ swears  _ he sees him grinning, a manic glint on his eyes as he watches him shut down and sob at the cacophony right into his ears, drilling into his brain. _

_ Eventually Hannibal reaches over and plucks the headphones off his ears, but he looks disappointed by the action, a slight frown on his face. "You did good, Will." _

_ "Dr. Lecter," he sobs out, still shaking, trying to regain composure. _

_ "Now, in a second, I need to see how you react to strong tastes. I've read that… people like _ you…"  _ There's a certain disdain in his voice. "Some of you can taste things strong enough to shut down from it. I wonder if I can get a similar reaction from a particularly heavy food from you as I got from that cacophony of sounds." _

_ Maybe he's making it up, but he swears, he swears he hears Hannibal say, "I did make that recording myself. I'm very proud of the effect it had on such a strong-willed boy as you are." _

The memories make him sick to his stomach. He can't believe he trusted Hannibal, he can't believe he fell into his trap  _ that _ easily. Is he that stupid, that easy to manipulate? Or is Hannibal just that good at what he does? He's desperate to know the answer, to be able to see Hannibal face to face once again, to confront him for all he's done to him.

He wants to kill him. He  _ needs _ to kill him.


End file.
